Summer car shows promoted

While auto show promoters from southeastern Michigan were encouraging people on Tuesday to come to their car shows and auto races this summer, Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel was trying to convince Oakland County officials to combine with Detroit and Macomb County to hold one large multi-county cruise.

Hackel said a tri-county cruise would be a huge boon to southeastern Michigan. He said Macomb County is part of a rich history that includes cars from as far back as the late 1940s and cruising Gratiot Avenue that dates back to the 1950s.

But Greg Rassel, president of the Woodward Dream Cruise, was non-committal when asked if Oakland County people, especially promoters from Royal Oak, would be interested in extending the cruise from Pontiac to Eight Mile Road, east to Gratiot Avenue and then north to Mount Clemens on Gratiot Avenue.

Hackel, who seemed pleased that Rassel didn’t immediately reject the idea, said the first step would be to get the communities of Eastpointe, Roseville and Clinton Township together and then start a community relations campaign for the good of all interested municipalities.

“It would be a signature event,” Hackel said. “We have to get all of the communities together so that we can create something similar to what you see on Woodward.

“This most certainly would not take away from Gratiot or Woodward cruises. What a heck of an event that would be but it will take some time to get our house in order.”

Rassel said this year’s Woodward Cruise will be the 19th, running 16 miles from Pontiac on the north to Ferndale on the Wayne County border. He said it attracts more spectators as the years go by.

“The Dream Cruise events are held in nine communities and there are different events in every one of them,” Rassel said.

Representatives from other events, including Eastpointe and Clinton Township, were introduced by Chevrolet vice president Jim Campbell on Wednesday at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights.